Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla and Twitter, and other tech executives have called for a halt to the ‘out of control’ race in artificial intelligence (AI), and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has responded.
While acknowledging that the letter wasn’t the best course of action, Altman, who spoke digitally at an MIT event, admitted that he agreed with parts of it.
He said: “I think moving with caution and an increasing rigor for safety issues is really important. The letter I don’t think was the optimal way to address it. I also agree as capabilities get more and more serious, that the safety bar has got to increase. We are doing other things on top of GPT-4 that I think have all sorts of safety issues that are important to address and were totally left out of the letter”.
After some of the largest names in the internet sector called for AI labs to halt the training of the most potent AI tools, for at least six months, citing significant risk to society and mankind, Altman disagreed with Musk and other tech executives’ call for a pause on AI.
The letter was written barely two weeks after Altman OpenAI unveiled GPT-4, an even more potent iteration of the technology that powers the widely used AI chatbot tool, ChatGPT.
In addition to specifying that independent experts should use the proposed pause to establish and implement a set of shared protocols for AI tools that are unquestionably safe, the letter also noted that the proposed halt should apply to AI systems more potent than GPT-4.
Governments should intervene and impose a moratorium, according to these tech titans, if the stop is not implemented quickly.
Altman, the CEO of the company that produced the popular chatbot ChatGPT, thinks artificial intelligence (AI) technology will fundamentally alter society.
He acknowledges that there are serious risks associated with AI, but also believes that it has the potential to be the most transformative technological advancement ever made by humankind.
In an interview with ABC News last month, he was certain that OpenAI needed regulators and society to be as involved in the development of ChatGPT 4 as possible, claiming that feedback will help prevent the potentially harmful effects the technology could have on humanity. He continued by saying he speaks with government representatives frequently.
However, he highlighted worries that these models might be exploited for widespread deception because they are now becoming more adept at creating computer code, which he believes could be utilized for hostile cyberattacks.
Other specialists in artificial intelligence are also growing more concerned about the impact on consumer privacy, the potential for biased reactions from AI technologies, and their capacity to disseminate false information.
These tools have also raised worries about the dangers that artificial intelligence (AI) can bring to professions, including the ability for students to cheat, the creation of major job losses, and the like.